All B/R update speculation.

[Dice_Box]

Again, I don’t have a big problem with Chalice, expect that I would agree the card is boring and requires very little skill when compared to its impact (but it’s hardly the only card in Magic in that latter respect). But saying “just play answers” is really trite. People complain because it creates non-games, and that’s never a good thing in Magic. And again, I don’t think it’s a big problem, mostly because I’ve had many more non-games against Reanimator than I’ve ever had against Chalice, but it’s worth understanding the sentiment.

The thing is, people play answers to Reanimator and then the story they tell themselves is different. Sure, it ends up being a non game but in your head you had your two or three Surgical and if you had just found one in time... So the story is not that you got your ass handed to you in a non interactive shit show, the story is about how it was close but you didn't quite get there.

People don't tend to have Chalice in mind when they build and it changes the story. Regardless of whether or not the story is actually any different doesn't mater, the story is just a story and it's in the mind of the person telling it. People can ignore one lot of bullshit and say it was within their power to change while throwing their hands up at the other and the only difference be the lies they talk themselves into believing. Be it Chalice, Opps, Cherrios or Reanimator.

It's the feeling of powerlessness, regardless of whether there was any power to be found in the first place. Really no difference in a turn one blow out from Chalice or from Grizzlebees, it's just you feel less powerless when you can delude yourself into thinking you had some control.

[Megadeus]

Abrade also kills probably at least half of the threats in the format via 3 damage, and answers vials, equipment, chalice, painter stuff, even can hit an LED if opponent missequences. The card is overly flexible and it's insane that it doesn't see more play

[Alfy]

The thing is, people play answers to Reanimator and then the story they tell themselves is different. Sure, it ends up being a non game but in your head you had your two or three Surgical and if you had just found one in time... So the story is not that you got your ass handed to you in a non interactive shit show, the story is about how it was close but you didn't quite get there.

Actually, what I usually tell myself against Reanimator is that I got run over by a freight train that somehow managed to stop on a dime, get in reverse, and come back for seconds. My patience with Chalice comes mostly from the fact it doesn’t start by Unmask-ing my FoW before going ritual, cabal-ing my Surgical, entomb-ing and reanimating whatever fatty is most likely to lock me out. When looking at this thread and before joining in the “Chalice debate”, I was considering proposing to ban the graveyard as a concept to put a stop to these shenanigans.

Of course, my feelings for Reanimator come in great parts from my metagame, i.e: the MTGO leagues, where it’s pretty much impossible to go without meeting the deck once if not twice every single run these days. And the fact I apparently happen to play in the same time zone as Ewlandon (praise the gods he seems to be less active these days).

But you make a good point about what makes some people so frustrated with Chalice when compared to other similar cards/strategies.

[Ronald Deuce]

Are you sure that what you said holds up in practice? There are plenty of nonblue, nonchalice decks that simply don't care that much about Chalice. . . . D&T

You got me there. White 2/X.dec. Intrepid.

Elves

Have you ever actually played Elves?

Reanimator: Chancellor, Unmask (self to bin the fatty or opponent to discard the chalice), CoBru, animate dead, exhume. Discarding to hand size is also a thing

"Play or draw" is also a thing.

Dredge: lol

Said the person who has demonstrated himself/herself never to have played (or played against) Dredge ever. I'm being sincere; you're not.

Goblins: Cavern, lackey is pretty much the only one drop, and you now have a billion options like Trashmaster or Cratermaker.

AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!

Maverick: You lose hierarch, mom and stp, wow such a big deal. Also unlike D&T most lists have maindeck answers like QPM or Knight of Autumn, and can gsz hierarch anyway.

So that's it, then. Play Maverick. Perfect.

So no, I disagree Chalice leads to format homogeneization. All those decks can either sidestep it or pack maindeck answers to it. And yeah, Chalice's primary targets are decks that run a bunch of one drops to find everything they need (lands, threats, answers), aka cantrips. You want interesting, nonbinary games? Don't make your deck so reliant on cantrips, like pretty much every above deck.

Reduce options to increase your options. Wow; great job. Sigged.

[chunderbucket]

See what I'd said about grown men who'd rather demean other people rather than play two drops?

I'm not sure what to make of the above reply since it really amounts to "you suck at Magic so I'm right", but for the record, having practiced pretty much every single deck under the sun down to stuff like Sylvan Plug, all my games involving Dredge vs Chalice in one way or another involved the Dredge player just shrugging and doing their thing (discarding to hand size, led, breakthrough x=1, whatever). So yeah, so much for format homogeneization by Chalice.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Reduce options to increase your options. Wow; great job. Sigged.

WHat do you think a ban is?

[MorphBerlin]

Find where I said "Maindeck" and quote it back to me, I'll wait.

I was talking about maindeckable from the beginning, not my fault you allways twist your arguments when shown how flawed they are.

Anyway if you are talking sb: With how warping chalice is for most legacy deck there should be much better SB options.

You used reanimator as an example for nongames. The difference is how stong sb options are avaliable for gy-shit. If you draw Surgical, leyline, RIP agaisnt those decks it compensates for their G1 Power. Drawing Abrade, By Force whatever against chalice cant really compare right? How about a leyline "your opponent cant cast colorless spells" that would be an adequate sb answer to chalice decks.

Unfun is a terrible reason to ban a card imo. Like when edh banned sundering titan and left sol ring legal, ew.

Have you ever played EDH? Sol ring actually has a negative EV on your win% undless your table plays cEDH

[non-inflammable]

How about a leyline "your opponent cant cast colorless spells" that would be an adequate sb answer to chalice decks.

sure thing, as long as they print my leyline.

[kinda]

sure thing, as long as they print my leyline.

+1000000000.

[Phoenix Ignition]

I was going to make a comment about the shitty card creation thread spreading but that card is actually great. I want it, even if I usually play blue.

Then again it's been so long before I've had the choice of "something with blue" and "dredge/lands/stacks/other niche deck" that I might not identify as a blue player given a real choice.

[Watersaw]

I was talking about maindeckable from the beginning, not my fault you allways twist your arguments when shown how flawed they are.

Anyway if you are talking sb: With how warping chalice is for most legacy deck there should be much better SB options.

You used reanimator as an example for nongames. The difference is how stong sb options are avaliable for gy-shit. If you draw Surgical, leyline, RIP agaisnt those decks it compensates for their G1 Power. Drawing Abrade, By Force whatever against chalice cant really compare right? How about a leyline "your opponent cant cast colorless spells" that would be an adequate sb answer to chalice decks.



Have you ever played EDH? Sol ring actually has a negative EV on your win% undless your table plays cEDH

Isn't Abrade seeing mainboard play in other formats? But nevermind that, are you seriously saying the correct solution to a card creating "binary non-games" is a LEYLINE? An uncounterable discard-proof turn 0 hate card that prevents a deck from operating until dealt with is somehow interactive? I understand that a lot of these describe Chalice but at least there's commitment involved. With these you just need to be mad enough to dedicate 4 sideboard slots to mulligan into wins vs a particular strategy.

The fact that even one Leyline is tournament playable is a failure of design.

[talpa]

sure thing, as long as they print my leyline

[talpa]

Personally? I like Prison because I find the idea of slowly stripping options away (...)
Ask yourself what the gameplan of Thresh is? Thresh in my view is just a slightly more interactive prison deck, if the deck is going to plan no one but you plays anything of relevance. But that's "Interactive" no? Its all about how you view it

Actually I think this describes precisely what's the difference between the two. What does the opponent of the two view in each case? What "feels" interactive?
A (true, hard) lock piece on turn 1 (be it chalice, blood moon, whatever is useful against a deck that is soft to them) is like a combo off T1, either you have your FoW or you lose. That's why I hate "hard" lock piece and I am in favor of "soft" lock pieces (thalia, spheres, winter orb, etc). The second ones really are SLOW in locking you out, while for the first ones the game reduces to a coin flip and then it's almost over.
Thresh on the contrary allows you to feel like you could escape from the "lock" at any moment, even when they are on the perfect hand (which by the way happens rarely recently, since the deck is not so well positioned in the current metagame), so you (both players) can enjoy more "emotional" moments instead of boredom.
If you truly meant this

I like the back and forth that comes from both trying to lock someone and then trying to hold it as they attempt to break out

the logical consequence should be that you should love play with and against Thresh.

In not suggesting playing some unknown two drop cantrip, I'm suggesting playing answers

...and hope to randomly draw them. Does it matter if you are speaking of 2-3 outs among your 53 cards remaining in the deck, that have to be drawn at most in a couple turns otherwise it would be too late? It doesn't seem so reasonable to expect your suggestion to work consistently. That's why plenty of people answered, more or less, "this leads to boring games".

Having Grizzlebees land turn one is boring, watching TNN do it's thing is boring, watching someome B2B another player out of the game is boring, watching someone masterbate with Cantrips is boring...
Did you have a point, or are you just complaining?

Yes, I think he has a point. Apart from the fact that some of us find fun watching someone MASTERbate with cantrips. This kind of people are not limited to just look others doing it but they could even be able to MASTERbate themselves by playing cantrips of their own (I suspect the rules allow that). The question is that non-interactive magic is not fun (buzzword or not), unless you are an hater. And I mean that in general, degenerate combos as well as degenerate prison pieces (so I am as against chalice as I am against blood moon, choke, Griselbrand, t1 coin-toss combo, etc).
See this:

I don't want to interact. I want to t1 you. I want to lock you out of the game

AKA "I just want to be an asshole".

Competitiveness or not, this is a game, and BOTH players should be allowed to have fun.

Yes, this could arise the question of what each of us consider "fun"... some enjoy deckbuilding, some love metagaming... personally, I think that the fun should be (also) in PLAYING, otherwise we could stay home instead of going to tournaments and goldfish our perfectly built deck. I think the majority of us wants to win, and because of that to "lock out of the game" their opponent (when you lose, you are out), but the key difference is that the other should have the opportunity to fight, the "lock out" should happen after some time and some swinging back and forth.
If you have fun because your opponent can't play, and only because of that, I'm sorry but I don't respect your opinion. I suspect those players in real life are also the kind of people who enjoy seeing others suffering instead of having fun themselves.

I think legacy players broadly fall into two camps, the first being people who want the format to be some libertarian carnival where anything goes and as few cards as possible should be banned. (...) The second camp includes players who are more competitive and/or more interested in magic being about technical gameplay. (...) The important thing to remember is that these two groups want very different things out of the format.

That's one of the most balanced post I ever saw in this thread. Also

Chalice is already restricted in Vintage

opens an interesting meditation. Let's look at the list of Vintage restricted that are not Legacy banned.
We have the cantrips (Brainstorm, Ponder) plus Merchant Scroll, which is obviously more powered in Vintage because of the target it can find.
Then, there are the brown hate pieces: Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, Thorn of Amethyst, Lodestone Golem. We have more MUD legacy legal than we have blue legacy legal... but we can say the two group almost equate and also that, like I just pointed out about Merchant, in Vintage brown is more broken because of Workshop.
Then we have combo enablers mana cheaters like Lotus Petal and Lion's Eye Diamond, and finally Monastery Mentor.
I don't have a conclusion but I find this interesting.

Exactly! That's the point! Magic should be about matchup variance

Can't you just subscribe to the Coin Toss World Championship instead of playing Magic the Gathering(R)?
Variance is the opposite of skill, and "matchup" variance is the worst kind. It has nothing to do with correctly predicting a metagame (assuming you did that, at least as much as you can, since it's not entirely possible, nor of course it is deterministic), it just means that you hope to be lucky with the complete randomness of the pairings. Either you have a deck that has matchup in which it is 90% favored and other matchups in which it is 90% unfavored (and if so, luck is all that matters); or you have a deck that is almost average against everything, but in this case you are giving away free wins, and most importantly, this kind of decks are not 55% against the metagame, they are more probably 50% or even 48% against the metagame.

Adapt or die. If you want to min max your other matches that's fine, but admit that's your choice and take your licks for it.

Actually, that's precisely what everyone does when chooses to ignore haters.deck, since they are a very small part of the metagame. The second type of decks usually can be improved to be 55% against the metagame except haters.deck; since you encounter the latter very rarely, even if they wreck you when you play against them, you have a better EV by chosing to ignore them. From this follows that it's right to view the pairings as "the landmine", just win when you don't encounter them, and just complain when you do, it's a better strategy overall.

[MorphBerlin]

Isn't Abrade seeing mainboard play in other formats? But nevermind that, are you seriously saying the correct solution to a card creating "binary non-games" is a LEYLINE? An uncounterable discard-proof turn 0 hate card that prevents a deck from operating until dealt with is somehow interactive? I understand that a lot of these describe Chalice but at least there's commitment involved. With these you just need to be mad enough to dedicate 4 sideboard slots to mulligan into wins vs a particular strategy.

The fact that even one Leyline is tournament playable is a failure of design.

Dice was comparing reanimator decks with chalice decks. I was just pointing out that the sb options against the two are much different in power level so it's not really a fair comparison. Especially since chalice shit off any 1cmc answer (besides ingot which sucks).

Abrade is playable in vintage because you can jump Mana costs with artifacts. Fair decks in legacy are mostly limited to one land per turn.
The only reason it was modern playable was affinity.

[Dice_Box]

Abrade is playable in vintage because you can jump Mana costs with artifacts. Fair decks in legacy are mostly limited to one land per turn.
The only reason it was modern playable was affinity.

What I am seeing here is "But the tempo loss does not exceed the value of the effect". Fine, that's fair, Tempo loss is a thing in Legacy. But you have to draw a line, either the card is the worst thing in the world and has to be stopped or its not relevant enough to value the tempo loss of playing an answer. Since your statements seem to suggest the second I am going to leave you be. Since you are happy to admit there is an answer but view it as not worthwhile, thus suggesting that besides all your posturing, Chalice is not actually that big of an issue for you. If it was, you would play an answer but you value the solution lower than the cost it inflicts upon you.

the logical consequence should be that you should love play with and against Thresh.

Not with, I personally do not like playing with the deck but I do very much enjoy playing against it. Thresh vs Goblins is a match for the ages. I will always pick the Goblins side myself.
I have not thought about why not with before now, I think it is because I played Goblins for so long that I just kind of have the two wrapped up in my head as the two sides of the same coin and I will always pick the little green men.

...and hope to randomly draw them. Does it matter if you are speaking of 2-3 outs among your 53 cards remaining in the deck, that have to be drawn at most in a couple turns otherwise it would be too late? It doesn't seem so reasonable to expect your suggestion to work consistently.

Shocking as this sounds, its what everyone else has to do. Lands, Elves, Goblins, DnT, Fish. Its not that much to ask that you draw your answers because its just the rule of the jungle for everyone else.

AKA "I just want to be an asshole".

Competitiveness or not, this is a game, and BOTH players should be allowed to have fun.

I do not think people playing SnT in the Dig age did so because they wanted to be a cunt, I think they did so because within the rules of the game that was the deck they both enjoyed and they could win with. Regardless of the decks "Fun" factor on the rest of the player base, something I feel was very low. I feel someone deciding to play Prison at a comp event falls within the same sphere as said SnT player did for the same reasons and would get the same reactions. That does not make them an asshole.

[Megadeus]

My favorite strategy is resource denial. I love stone rainrain, sink hole, wasteland, Deus of Calamity (hence the screen name). Is my idea of fun not valid because people don't like playing against it

[Lemnear]

Minimizing the options of your opponent to interact with your deck is a common way to win in MTG but pushing that idea to the limit is undoubtfully creating boring, one sided games with one player sitting just there unable to do anything but scooping in order to speed up losing.

There is very little difference between getting killed, locked out or facing lethal on turn 1 as all scenarios boil down to the ever same "Do you have FoW?" nonsense haunting the game ever since. Blowouts are terrible for any game and them being as common as in Vintage/Legacy, is even worse.

[chunderbucket]

'You're an asshole for playing fast combos or lockpieces"
"You must enjoy seeing people suffer"
"The correct strategy is to complain"
"Lol go play cointoss"

It keeps getting better, right? I get that people can get passionate, but is it possible to talk about one's feelings about a card game without calling your detractors' skill, moral character or tastes into question?

I find cantrips boring. The worst offender is Miracles, with latest iterations of the deck playing no less than 18 of them (4 BS/4 Ponder/4 AK/3 Preordain/1 Portent/2 Predict), possibly even more. The deck just keeps drawing cards that draw more cards. Even other value vards like Jace or Snap are usually used to draw cards. I don't know how to explain but it feels incredibly boring to watch a pilot do their thing. Not only that, but the pilots take an excruciatingly long time to kill me once they get ahead. Does that mean I should start calling Miracle pilots assholes, bitch about Terminus until it's banned, groan and sigh when my opppnent goes Tundra Portent go, insult them in public forums, or behave in any other way than a civil adult? Of course not. To my dismay, some people like draw-go hard control. To the dismay of others, I happen to like lockpieces and fast combos. The beauty of Legacy is that we're all in there together being able to play what we like. I tolerate your playstyle, you tolerate mine, after the game we laugh and go for drinks because we're all civilized grownups. Why people want to ruin this for everyone is beyond me.

[MorphBerlin]

'You're an asshole for playing fast combos or lockpieces"
"You must enjoy seeing people suffer"
"The correct strategy is to complain"
"Lol go play cointoss"

To clarify I was only referring to playing prision, fast combo etc in edh. I do think it's very antisocial there unless it's clear that it's a dedicated competitive table.

If it's what gets your going in legacy I will just roll my eyes and move one to the next round.
Problem is that you have to wait 30 min when playing in paper until the people who actually try to play a game are finished. Another reason I prefer paying online these days.

TBH Miracles is much more interesting than you describe, yeah sometimes they are treading a lot of water and you have to know when it's time to concede even if you are not at 0 yet. but they are very beatable if you know how but I am sure somebody like you lacks patience and strategic planning over several turns to poke holes at the right time to gain incremental advantages. That's what I would argue most people find interesting about legacy: tight technical gameplay with lots of little decisions to pull ahead. The degenerate combo/prison stuff is unfortunately unavoidable because of the big card pool

If you're just about slamming those MUs are probably boring if you are not conceding after they had said "yes" to your "do you have it" strategy and take time to actually won the game.

[Ace/Homebrew]

If you're just about slamming those MUs are probably boring if you are not conceding after they had said "yes" to your "do you have it" strategy and take time to actually won the game.

I agree that casual Magic (most often EDH) has a social aspect which should ideally be considered all the down to deck design. Free time is finite and sacred and if you waste mine I am justified if I get upset.

However tournament Magic is a different animal. It is preferable if everyone involved is having a good time, but that is unrealistic. Money is on the line and that changes things. You don't get to choose your opponents and if you cared about them having a good time then it would require that you concede any wins (this is not a 1-1 ratio, but tournament Magic attracts more of this style player).

Your last comment also shows your bias throughout this entire 'conversation'. If someone plays Chalice they are ruining the game by making it binary and unfun. But someone that slams cards is doing it wrong and deserves to lose against Miracles.

C'mon man... I get you don't have fun losing to a build-around-me card that is easy to deal with (it is, but you have to dedicate slots for a matchup you should just plan to dodge). But the card is not banworthy by even the loosest metric.

If you want to complain when your opponent uses unfun cards, stick to EDH. Don't try to dictate the way I get to beat you in tournament Magic.